Married to a man of the cloth, and all alone

There are two movies going on at the same time in “While I Was Gone,” premiering Sunday on CBS.

The first is an effective little thriller in which a minister’s wife (Kirstie Alley) has her life turned upside-down after an old college crush (Peter Horton) reenters her world.

The second is a deceptively complex and provocative psychological drama that examines issues of fidelity, faith, compassion and forgiveness. And that’s the movie Alley says she was most interesting in making.

“It’s just incredibly subtle and twisted,” the actress says. “The first time I read it, I thought it was just the story of a preacher’s wife who has an affair, but then I got to [the big revelation scene], and I went, ‘What?!’ ”

Based on an Oprah Book Club selection by Sue Miller (“The Good Mother”), the TV movie opens as Jo (Alley) is enjoying a lazy afternoon drifting in a boat with her husband, the Rev. Daniel Beckett (Bill Smitrovich, “Life Goes On”). Abruptly, Jo has an out-of-body experience in which she is looking down on Daniel in the boat, alone. The image haunts Jo, although Daniel dismisses it out of hand.

The next day at her suburban Boston veterinary practice, a man brings in his ailing dog for treatment. Jo is stunned to recognize him as Eli Mayhew (Horton), a former housemate from her bohemian college days who has relocated to the town. When, in due course, Eli invites Jo to meet him at a hotel, Jo goes there expecting to begin an affair with him.

Instead, Eli confesses to a secret from their college days that shakes Jo to the core.

Alley says she was struck by both the provocative issues the script raises and the peeling away of relationships to unveil the serious problems beneath a cosmetically perfect surface, a situation that describes Jo’s and Daniel’s marriage.

“It was haunting to me, things like the very different spiritual and nonspiritual beliefs that people have,” Alley says of the script. “And it’s so twisted when Jo tells her husband what happened, and the first thing out of his mouth is that Eli had made it up so he wouldn’t have to sleep with her. You can see that he really had a badly skewed way of looking at her, implying that she isn’t worth having an affair with. He probably has been ‘handling’ her all these years, which answers a lot of unspoken questions.

“I love when Jo says to him, ‘It’s harder being a Christian than you thought,’ because this minister has no real compassion when it comes down to his own family. It’s just so utterly bizarre that he doesn’t even really register this incredibly shocking thing she is trying to tell him.”

Alley says the character of Jo resonated strongly for her. “What Jo was like back when she was living in that house, that’s very much how I was, back in the day,” she says. “I was around people who were sort of hippies, and I didn’t quite fit in. I was very awkward and inhibited, and I wanted to be groovy.

“The older Jo is certainly not like me, because I’ve become much more extroverted, but I have been in relationships where that subtle, covert invalidation works on you: You start believing that you’re ugly, that your perspective on life is worthless. Jo’s husband rarely even pays attention to what she is saying, or he takes what she says and subverts it into his own perspective. It’s insidious.”

John Crook writes for Tribune Media Services.

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‘While I Was Gone’

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday

Where: CBS

Rating: TV-PG-DV (may be unsuitable for young children with advisories for suggestive dialogue and violence)